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MASI Student Awarded Prestigious SSHRC Scholarship

September 26, 2004

Brian Butcher, Ph.D. Cand.

One of our doctoral students, Brian Butcher, recently received a prestigious Social Sciences and Humanities Research Scholarship (SSHRC) award valued at $35,000 per year for 36 months. It is given annually to only 400 Canadian students who demonstrate a high standard of scholarly achievement in the social sciences or humanities. Brian is in his second year of doctoral studies. He has completed the course work and most recently, the comprehensive exams. Brian is of East Indian and French origin, born in Winnipeg but hailing from Montreal prior to his move to Ottawa in 2000. It was in Montreal that he married his Korean-Canadian wife Jean in 1997 and was received into the Ukrainian Catholic Church in 1998. He plans to explore, in his thesis, the implications for Byzantine liturgical praxis of our post- modern, technologically-oriented culture, specifically by using the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur to analyze the celebration of the Great Blessing of Waters. Brian and Jean have just been blessed with the birth of their fifth child. Brian hopes to pursue a joint academic and pastoral ministry in the future, sharing the riches of Byzantine Christianity with “all whom the Lord our God shall call.” (Acts 2:39)